The field of business is highly diverse and covers quite a few different disciplines. There are many specialty areas within the field of business. As you further your educational career, especially if you continue to graduate school, you might find yourself in even more niche areas. Below are a few areas that can encompass what business might represent.
Primary research in business fields looks a little different than others. Primary sources are still original materials that provide direct evidence of events, persons, companies, or objects. However, in business, primary sources provide information about what a company or industry might say or represent about itself. Broadly, these can encompass everything from financial reports to press releases to interviews to social media posts. Some specific examples of what might encompass a primary source in business research is included below.
In business, be careful not to confuse primary and secondary sources together. Sometimes you might find trade publication or compilations of data or market reports and those are more likely to be secondary sources. In this discipline too things like newspaper articles and magazine articles also fall under the umbrella of secondary sources.
Just because a source is considered primary doesn't mean you can use it without looking at it with a critical eye. You have to consider elements of it's creation and intended use. You want to ask yourself who created it and why. Another good question to ask yourself is about the intended audience - is it shareholders, the public, the government? Would that influence the information at all? These questions help you think critically and can help you contextualize the information you are seeing with the other research you are doing
The Kraemer Family Library has resources to help you find primary sources, both within our collections and beyond. Research guides related to your discipline can be a great place to start further research, and the subject librarian who works with your discipline is a great resource too.